Kentucky Newspaper to Publish List of Deadbeat Dads

By: (AP) Parents who have skipped out on child support payments they owe in Jefferson County are headed for some bad publicity.

The county attorney's office is planning to publish in the Courier-Journal of Louisville a list of parents who owe a combined $40 million in back payments. County Attorney Irv Maze said one father of 13 children who made the list owes $202,000.

The list is the first of its kind in Jefferson County and will include the last known addresses of the parents and the amounts they owed as of June 30.

Maze said he hopes the list, to be published July 31, will help track down deadbeat parents.

"I can't get the money if I don't get them served and in court," Maze said.

He declined to say how many people will be on the list or how he chose them.

The county has 67,000 child-support cases on record affecting 100,000 children, according to the county's child-support enforcement division. That division collected about $68 million in child-support payments last year, a quarter of the total taken in statewide.

A 2001 state law requires Kentucky to publish an annual "Most Wanted" poster of purported child-support delinquents. The first poster appeared in 1992. Posters have appeared annually since 1997.

Since the "Most Wanted" program began, it has helped locate 41 of 46 publicized delinquent parents owing $935,000 to 68 children, according to the state attorney general's office.

Debbie Kline, executive director of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support, a Cleveland-based advocacy group, called the list an "excellent idea."

Not only will it help track down delinquent parents, she said, but it also will encourage payments in the future.

"If someone knows their name could be published on a list, then maybe they won't let their child support go unpaid," Kline said.

An advocate for fathers' rights criticized the list, saying the public shame unfairly stigmatizes fathers.

Jeffery Leving, a Chicago lawyer who lobbies for fathers seeking custody and visitation rights, heads the state-appointed Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood.

"I've never seen a list of deadbeat moms who don't allow visitation," he said, adding that the U.S. child-support enforcement system is "gender-biased."